Outrage as Red Cross denied access to Baba Amr

The Red Cross and Red Crescent convoys have been denied access to the Baba Amr district of Homs.

AFP: Syrian TV

Syria faced harsh world condemnation as it continued to block the Red Cross from delivering desperately needed aid to the vanquished rebel stronghold of Baba Amr in the city of Homs.

Britain and Turkey joined the international outcry accusing president Bashar al-Assad's regime of committing a crime by barring aid convoys from entering the area for the second day.

As the condemnation spiralled, so did harrowing accounts of the situation inside Homs, where 700 people were killed and thousands wounded by regime forces in a 27-day blitz, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

HRW said shells sometimes fell at the rate of 100 an hour and that satellite images showed 640 buildings visibly damaged but stressed that the real picture could be worse.

British foreign secretary William Hague said the refusal to grant humanitarian aid access to citizens affected by the violence showed how "criminal" the regime had become.

"We will go on arguing for action at the UN and for the international community to pull together, because the denial of humanitarian aid on top of all the murder, torture and repression in Syria just underlines what a criminal regime this has become," Mr Hague said.

His Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu said the regime's "savagery must stop".

"The fact that aid is prevented and access is refused to United Nations officials constitutes another crime," Mr Davutoglu said, calling for an international response.

'Grisly' reports

On Friday (local time), a seven-truck convoy organised by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent Society was barred from entering Baba Amr.

Syrian authorities said the decision was taken for security reasons, namely the presence of bombs and landmines.

But UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon demanded unconditional humanitarian access to Syrian cities, saying there were "grisly" reports of summary executions and torture in Homs, Syria's third largest city.

"The Syrian authorities must open without any preconditions to humanitarian communities," he said.

"It is totally unacceptable, intolerable. How as a human being can you bear... this situation."

By Saturday afternoon the Red Cross said that none of its teams had entered Baba Amr.